By this author

The Labour Leadership race has certainly come alive in the last week. At the beginning there was much complaining about the rather dull and formulaic nature of the contest – the hustings were all the same, the candidates too close to each other in politics and in style. Whether these criticisms were true or not,…

Politics is changing. No, politics has changed. Out there in the real world people treat politicians not as leaders but as obstacles. The idea of macho and charismatic leaders making promises to do things for people is scorned. The best politicians recognise that a fundamental change is needed to our basic conception of what leadership is…

The Labour party was formed to be the voice of ordinary working people in parliament; the unions the voice of ordinary working people in the workplace. We have had different challenges through the ages and we have not always acted as best we could when in power or in conflict, but we have always retained…

When a reshuffle is in the air, everybody can sense it. Ministers and their shadows pop up on the television a lot more, make far more interventions. The press is full of endless speculations. Who’s in? Who’s out? Who’s up? Who’s down? The one question that never, ever seems to be asked is why do…

The problem we have when talking about welfare reform is that for many years Labour has failed to have a debate with itself about what we believe the welfare state is for and therefore what welfare reform is intended to achieve. Welfare reform has instead become a default term for cutting the welfare budget. If…

For the last two years I and many others have called and called again for political panels in general – and particularly those around the Labour party conference – to be a bit more gender balanced; to at least have one woman speaker on every topic. It really isn’t difficult to do. In the 10…